


Rough Pillow

by Evening_Bat



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 07:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2183793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evening_Bat/pseuds/Evening_Bat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter doesn't know what Rocket's got against sleep, he just hopes he gets some rest before he crosses the wrong wires and blows them all to pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rough Pillow

**Author's Note:**

> Another one from guardian_kink. :)

Peter considered himself a pretty adaptable guy. With the life he’d led, he had to be. Abducted from Earth? Well, the galaxy turned out to be a pretty interesting place for a kid. Growing up surrounded by a gang of violent thieves? The bruises were a fair trade for the useful skills he picked up along the way. Going from criminal to hero in one _awesome_ move? ...Okay, there was no down side to that one. But learning to sharing the close quarters of his ship with the crazy people he fondly called his new teammates? Peter was starting to think that was the limit of his mental flexibility. Not to mention his durability. 

Gamora didn’t have to hit him _that_ hard. It wasn’t like he’d _meant_ to walk in on her.

Figuring it was marginally safer territory, he headed back out into the public areas of the ship. And if he was nursing a sense of unfairness along with the bruise spreading across his ribs, that was his business. At least the inside of his head was still his own space.

It was no surprise to find Rocket busy tinkering, surrounded by a random assortment of tools and parts. Groot waved an enthusiastic hello from his pot, safely ensconced on the table under a sun lamp. Peter waved back, happy enough to let Groot’s obvious cheer buoy his own mood. In the spirit of keeping the peace, he also decided not to wonder where Rocket had gotten all of the parts he was currently picking through, or count how many probably-bombs were already scattered around him.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked by way of greeting. Peter wasn’t much of one for keeping a regular schedule himself, but Rocket always seemed to be up when Peter was crashing, always seemed to be awake when Peter was dragging himself out of bed.

Rocket shrugged without looking up from the mass of wires he was untangling. “Waste of time.”

“You’re going to waste the rest of our lives if you get too tired to tell those apart.” Call him crazy, but Peter would rather their resident mad bomber be well rested before playing with high explosives.

Rocket irritably flicked an ear, baring his teeth in a short growl. “If you’re so damn concerned about getting enough sleep, go take a nap. Then maybe the rest of us can get some shit done.”

“All right, all right!” Peter gave in, backing away with his hands raised in surrender. What the hell, had _everyone_ woken up cranky today?

Time to go sit in the cockpit for a while, he decided. If he was lucky, he’d manage to avoid pissing Drax off along the way.

***

“So, can you actually die of not sleeping?” Peter wondered aloud after Rocket had shuffled out of the kitchen clutching a mug of Xandarian coffee almost as big as Groot’s pot.

He’d eat his own cooking before admitting it to him, but Peter was starting to worry about Rocket. The guy really, genuinely never seemed to sleep. And Peter was pretty sure that wasn’t healthy, even for whatever Rocket was. Oh sure, Rocket was getting by better than Peter would on no sleep, but he looked tired _all the time_. Peter’d never had a true appreciation for what “bright-eyed and bushy tailed” really meant until Rocket stopped being it.

Gamora shrugged. “I can’t.”

“Really?” Peter asked, momentarily diverted.

“Really.” She propped her cheek on her fist and smiled wryly at him. “When I get tired enough, I’ll pass out.”

“Oh. Yeah. There is that.” Not that the thought of Rocket exhausting himself to the point of collapse was much more pleasant than watching him trail around the ship looking wiped, but it was better than dying of sleep deprivation. “So I guess I can stop worrying about it.”

“Unless you’d _like_ for Rocket to rip your face off for fussing over him?”

Peter hastily pasted on a bright smile. “Worried? Me? Never!”

***

Peter had expected that the first time he caught Rocket dozing off, it would be a relief. And it probably would have been. If he hadn’t found him napping in a crate of _bombs_.

At first glance, he hadn’t realized Rocket was there. The room that he’d taken over as a workshop seemed empty when Peter stuck his head in to look for him. But Groot was sunning himself on the table, and now that Groot had grown legs and couldn’t reliably be kept in his pot, wherever Groot was, Rocket was bound to be nearby. ...And that was about when Peter noticed the striped tail draped over the edge of the box in the middle of the room. The box in which Rocket had grudgingly agreed to collect his latest toys after Drax nearly blew up the ship trying to turn on a viewscreen.

Trust Rocket to consider _explosives_ a pleasantly relaxing mattress.

And then it turned out that Rocket was the lightest sleeper in the whole of the universe, because Peter would swear that he hadn’t made a sound, and it still woke him up.

“The hell do you want, Quill?” came the drowsy question from the box.

“Oh, nothing!” he lied automatically. “Just, you know. Hadn’t heard anything from down here for a while. Thought I should come make sure that you hadn’t accidentally invented a disintegrator beam and vaporized yourself or anything.”

Rocket’s tail twitched, and he raised a hand out of the box to give Peter a one-fingered reply.

“Right then! Glad to see everything’s okay, I’ll just leave you to your disturbing fondness for things that blow up,” Peter said, winking at Groot as he withdrew.

The burble of Groot’s laughter followed him down the hall, undiminished by Rocket’s grumpy, “Stop encouraging him!”

***

“Rocket! Get your butt in here! Team movie night! Attendance is mandatory!” Peter yelled down the hall, to be answered by a clatter and a burst of swearing.

“Why? That movie was shit the last time you made me watch it, do you think it’s gotten any better since?”

Right. “Made” him watch it. The last time Peter had been watching this, Rocket had wandered in partway through with a pair of smashed tablets and Groot at his heels. Then he’d proceeded to lay claim to half the couch and bitch all the way through the movie. It as a good thing Peter’d already seen it about fifty times, otherwise he might have missed something. And okay, watching Rocket rant about how “guns do not work that way, numbnuts!” had been kind of hilarious.

“Team bonding experience!” Peter insisted.

“And we have cracked mayzin seeds,” Gamora added from behind him, tossing a few into her mouth.

Hey, never let it be said that Star-Lord didn’t know how to bribe his people into being sociable.

Between Groot making sad eyes at him, and the promise of the mayzin seeds, it only took five more minutes to lure Rocket away from his latest project and into what passed for their rec area. He complained the whole way, but he grabbed the bowl of seeds out of Peter’s hand fast enough and followed Groot onto the squashy chair that wasn’t quite big enough for two people. Since Groot was only twice as tall as Rocket at the moment, it meant they fit with room to spare.

It took forty-five minutes and three very impressive explosions for Peter to realize that there’d been far fewer interruptions than he’d expected. Rocket had missed the initial action scenes last time, and Peter had actually been kind of looking forward to watching him lose it over the inaccurate pyrotechnics. But no, not a peep out of him. Peter shot a look over to the chair to make sure that Rocket hadn’t choked to death on mayzin seeds and indignation. 

Nope, he was breathing just fine. Better than fine, in fact.

“Awww,” he said under his breath, grinning and nudging Gamora in the ribs. “Look at that.”

Drax was already watching them with a softer expression than Peter had ever seen on his face. Shades of Drax the Dad instead of Drax the Destroyer, maybe.

Groot beamed back at them, sprawled happily in the squashy chair with Rocket curled up in his lap. Explosions in the background notwithstanding, Rocket was very clearly down for the count. Groot had one hand spread protectively across Rocket’s back, and together they were cute enough to make Peter’s teeth ache.

Rocket slept through the whole movie and didn’t even stir enough to complain when Groot picked him up to carry him to bed afterwards.

***

So it was no mystery to anyone with eyes why Rocket started looking livelier as Groot got bigger. And even if they’d been blind, and deaf, and dumb as rocks, Peter thought they’d probably have figured it out when Groot started hauling Rocket away when he spent too long in his workshop.

“Put me down! I’m fine!” Rocket demanded, smacking a fist into Groot’s chest.

Groot kept walking down the hallway, ignoring the way Rocket squirmed on his shoulder. He nodded to Peter as he passed.

Peter bit his tongue hard and didn’t say a word. The shit-eating grin he couldn’t smother was going to get him into enough trouble.

Sure enough, Rocket glared murder at him before he went back to trying to shake off the loose but unyielding grasp of Groot’s hand. “Look, I was just resting my eyes!”

“I am Groot.”

“Oh, shut up, that was not the fifth time tonight!”

It took some effort, but Peter managed to keep a mostly straight face until the door to their room closed behind them, and he could stuff his fist into his mouth and laugh until he cried.

***

(And if Peter sometimes laid awake at night listening to the low thrum of Groot humming Rocket to sleep, well, he'd never say anything about it in the light of day. And as long as no one talked about it, he didn’t think either of them would begrudge him the comfort. Since apparently that’s what friends were for.)

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I'll be the first to admit that I have a _thing_ for people sleeping on people. If you think I could pass up a prompt about Rocket napping on Groot, you are _wrong_.


End file.
